


Bones

by HypnosThanatosTwin



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Hurt / little Comfort, Life is easier if you pretend to know nothing, but sometimes there're glimpses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 11:30:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7506553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HypnosThanatosTwin/pseuds/HypnosThanatosTwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Glimpses of the past and present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bones

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little drabble that I started after binge-watching the first two seasons and have now finished almost half a year after finishing season three. Just thought I'd share :)

_“When we found Billy, we freed him, and when given the opportunity to confront the man that had taken him from his family, held him in bondage for three years without wages or reprieve, he slew that man.”_

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He is dreaming and he is twelve years old. The streets he is wandering are dark but familiar. The flyers in his hands with bold and tiny letters smell of ink, of home. They will stain his fingers for days. 

He is on his way home, his parents have by this time shut down the print and his mum will have started dinner. He is almost there when rough hands grab him and pull him backwards. He tries to cry out, tries to kick and squirm, but he is only twelve and too weak to fight against the laughing men that pull him away from his life. 

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Billy Bones wakes up after the certainty that he was about to die in dark waters and he wishes that he had died. 

He can't move, he can't move, he can't breathe!

He tries to think, to focus on something else. His fingers grab at the sand, his heels dig into it, he listens to the familiar sound of the waves. He tries not to feel like he is twelve, thirteen, fourteen, the grains of sand dig into his skin. He gasps and breathes.

He's not dead. 

He is captured.

He is no child, he is twenty-six and the tallest and strongest sailor on the Walrus. He will survive and fight. 

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Billy sits opposite the British Officer, Captain of the Scarborough and forces himself not to let his hatred show. He keeps his eyes downtrodden, broken, but a little suspicious because he knows they are looking for it. He is surrounded by soldiers and he knows the wrong move will cost him his life. 

There is a glass of water in front of him and he knows it is the same water they have been pouring on him the last few days, the same water that has tightened the leather in the sun, that has stolen his breath and still makes his ribs ache with piercing agony. He does not drink it. That has to come later. His eyes wander to the soldiers, he keeps them shadowed and knows they notice. 

“You don't seem like a dishonest man.” the officer sitting across from him starts and Billy shifts so that he looks at him, drawing his brows together in a slight frown. The other man takes it as confusion, while Billy just waits. “Nassau is not a dishonest place. We both know that good people live there, good men sail there.” the Captain of the Scarborough continues. His words seem true, but Billy can see the mans disgust in his eyes, the smugness of someone talking to a person he thinks worth less than the dirt under his boots. 

Billy continues to stay silent when the Captain continues with the friendly attitude, trying to coax him into some form of agreement. The boatswain wants to shake his head in disbelief as the man who had him tortured for days, tries to get Billy back towards the British navy. If it wouldn't ruin his chances of getting out of here alive, the pirate would have laughed out loud. He had served the British navy, had been shackled to them against his will for three years, had been beaten, diminished and broken more thoroughly than the man opposite him could ever imagine. The last thing he would do in his life, would be helping them in any way.

But he keeps his face confused, desperate and growing hopeful. Starts to nod in the right places, starts to take slow sips of the water offered to him and tries not to choke as it runs over the cracked skin of his mouth and throat, burning its way through his parched flesh. He takes ten pardons and agrees to hand over Flint. 

He accepts the beating, endures the taunts, laughter and sneers and leaves. 

Billy returns to Nassau barely alive, but in the time it has taken him to get there, he has had enough time to think on the things he saw. A garrison, an armory, settlements. The navy was not just passing through, they were preparing to strike. 

And Nassau wasn't ready. 

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

As a kid, fingers smudged with black ink and paper the most powerful weapon in his families repertoire, Billy wanted to become a writer. He listened to his parents speeches, to the friends of his parents talks and opinions when they met in the middle of the night and Billy listened in from the shadows of the machinery. 

He wanted to bring smiles when people turned pages and read words, wanted to bring a tear or two to their eyes, make their heart tremble like his mother could with her passionate paroles. He read everything they printed, the articles for the newspaper, the stories from authors published by the tabloids, the political discussions, the gossipy nonsense. His father had taught him to read early on in his childhood and Billy could barely remember a time when he hadn't laid eyes on a word and didn't know the meaning of it. 

He had lost that dream that winter evening, when he was abducted by the press gangs. When cruel men had grabbed him and he had awoken out at sea with no name and no identity. When the rest of the world looks at him and doesn't see a person any more, just a tool, a worker, something not better than a slave, with no rights and no opinion. That is when dreams break and a child learns that words are weak when spoken through blooded teeth. That they are weak, when hands hold you down and take everything from you. That they can cut through him and leave festering wounds, while his own seem to have no effect at all. 

Words couldn't save him, so he grew silent and observed. Stayed in the background and hated and seethed and barely breathed with despair. 

The day pirates took the ship and offered a place on their crew, Billy took the knife offered and only stopped stabbing his former Captain when the blood had splattered him head to toe, when his breath was heaving from the exhaustion, when he realized that his silence was broken by choked laughter. 

The last of his childhood died that day. 

But it was also a new start. He was a person again. He gained a name, brothers, a purpose, a life, a voice.

He gained freedom. And he would keep it.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

_“If they won't take up arms and fight alongside us, I want them terrified of the thought of doing it against us.”_

_“Well, then, it shouldn't be you. If you want them to fear you, it shouldn't be you delivering the message. You're returning from the dead. But no ghost story I've ever heard of begins with the ghost introducing himself. I mean, you walk in there and insist on your own fearsomeness sort of threatens to do more damage than good. The message I understand, but I think someone else needs to deliver it.”_

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

END

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it.


End file.
